Mitchell shrugged. “I only worked for that one builder. All I know for sure is that he’s a black and white kind of guy.”
So Dale Lacombe and Ron Driskell might have had a special—and acrimonious—relationship. Interesting.
“Doing any shopping today?” Mitchell smiled down at me from his six-plus feet of height. “Something for Sally’s birthday next month? If she’s still into horses, I have the perfect thing.”
Another astounding by-product of Mitchell’s new job was the realization that his memory for arcane facts and figures was being put to productive use. My older brother, my only sibling, had two daughters and a son, and Mitchell already knew not only their names but also their birthdays, favorite colors, interests, and current career indications.
“She’s all about horses,” I said, “but I’ll stop by some other time to talk about presents. I wanted to tell you that we have a small stack of books for you. I know Donna called a couple of times and I wanted to make sure you’d received the message.”
Mitchell made a face. “I don’t see myself coming in there for a while.”
“But your fines are all paid up.” I frowned. “You can check out anything you’d like. I even found a copy of Philip Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for you.”
“Yeah, well.” He blew out a breath. “It’s that new director. Jennifer what’s-her-name. She’s . . . she’s not from here, if you know what I mean.”
Ash’s mother had said something similar about Carmen. “She could be from Timbuctoo and still be a good library director.”
He shrugged. “Don’t care where she’s from. She just doesn’t belong. All she wants to do is change things. Like everything we were doing before was wrong.”
I did agree, actually, but felt compelled to defend my boss. “She’s new and she’s trying to impress the board, that’s all. I wouldn’t take her need to change things as a true criticism.”
“Yeah?” Mitchell’s hands flexed. “Then why did she tell me I shouldn’t be reading stuff like Robert Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy? That I was a grown man and should be reading things to improve myself, not reading science fiction written for fourteen-year-olds.”
“She did?” I asked weakly.
“And she said there was no reason for anyone over the age of ten to spend their time on a jigsaw puzzle, not when there were so many things in the world that needed doing.”
The library’s reading room had a table that was practically dedicated to the assembly of jigsaw puzzles. There was a tall stack of the puzzles up in the Friends of the Library book sale room, and they seemed to wander downstairs on their own.
I couldn’t think of a time when there wasn’t a puzzle going on that table, and there was almost always someone sitting there, putting in a piece or three. It was quiet entertainment for dozens of people and I’d seen everyone from third-shift workers at a local factory to a state legislator doing their bit.
“Well,” I said uncomfortably, “that’s just her opinion. She’s entitled to thinking whatever she wants about jigsaw puzzles. Maybe she had a bad experience as a kid, or something.”
Mitchell gave me a disbelieving stare. “With puzzles?”
“Um.” I searched for a reason; any reasonable reason would do. “When she was a kid, she could have been doing a jigsaw with a great uncle who had a heart attack.” Not a bad reason at all. Nicely done, Minnie! “He’d had a heart condition for years, but that fateful day he clutched his chest, gasping for air, and fell to the floor, right next to Jennifer.” I was feeling quite sorry for the young version of my boss. “She called nine-one-one, but it was too late. He was gone. Maybe since then, she hasn’t been able to look at a jigsaw puzzle without remembering how helpless and how sad and traumatized she felt that day.”
He snorted. “And maybe I’m going to win the lottery. She’s not a nice person and she doesn’t belong here. I’m not going back to the library until she’s gone.”
“Stephen was here for almost ten years,” I reminded him.
“Then,” Mitchell said grimly, “it looks like I won’t go to the library for ten years.”
“We’ll miss you,” I said, as seriously as I could, because there was no way Mitchell could stay away from all our books and all our magazines. I gave him two weeks at the outside.
• • •
The next day was a bookmobile day, a fact that Eddie figured out the moment I pulled his carrier from the boardinghouse’s front closet. Aunt Frances watched him stand at the ready while I opened the wire door and arranged his fluffy pink blanket.
“Most cats,” she observed, “run and hide when the cat carrier comes out.”
“Eddie is not most cats.” I held the door open. “Sir, your carriage awaits.”
“Mrr,” he said, strolling into the carrier and flopping down into an Eddie-sized heap.
Aunt Frances laughed. “That was definitely a ‘thank you.’”
“He is just a cat, you know.”
“Eddie,” my aunt said. “Did you hear what she said about you?”
“Mrr!”
Later that morning, when I passed on the exchange to Julia as we started the preparations at the first stop, she looked at Eddie, who was sitting on his new favorite perch, the corner of the front computer desk.
“Have you forgiven her yet?” she asked him.
He stared her in the eye and inched forward. “Mrr!”
Julia shook her head, sighing. “Sorry, Minnie. He might not get over this one for quite a while.”
I rolled my eyes. “You and Aunt Frances are two of a kind.”
“What kind is that?”
Julia and I turned at the familiar voice. “Leese, I didn’t hear you come in,” I said. “And of course I’m different from those two. I’m shorter, for one thing.”
“Like that’s a real difference.” Leese plopped her pile of return books on the back desk. “At the core, you’re the same.”
She was so wrong. “I hate to cook, I can’t do sudoku for beans, and the only time I watch the evening news is when someone I know might be on it.”
Leese stood in front of the selection of new books and pulled out Louise Erdrich’s most recent release. “Superficial. I only know your aunt a little, but I’d bet that all three of you would do anything for a friend or family member, that you have the kindest hearts I’ve ever come across, and that you find every possible opportunity to laugh.”
It was an interesting point of view, but my brain danced back to the first part of her sentence. “Speaking of family, how’s Brad doing?”
She slumped. “He’s been better. The brewery is still trying to figure out what went wrong. They’re running some sort of lab tests on that beer and those won’t be done for a week or so.”
Julia and I exchanged a glance at her tone. It was one of worry, anxiety, and concern. Which brought to mind something I’d been wondering about for a while. It probably wasn’t the best time to ask, but if I waited for the perfect time, I could be waiting until doomsday.
“How is it that you and Brad and Mia are so close?” I asked. “You have the same father, but not the same mother, and you weren’t raised together, but the three of you are as close as full siblings. Maybe closer.”
Leese stared at the opening page of LaRose and didn’t say anything.
Uh-oh. Clearly I’d stumbled smack into an uncomfortable subject. “Sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to pry. Forget I asked, okay?”
“No.” Leese shut the book gently and turned to face us. “It’s all right.” Her eyes tracked Eddie, who jumped down from the desk and walked a circuitous route around Julia and me to bump the top of his head against Leese’s shins.
She hunched down and scratched the top of his head. “It was a long time ago,” she said in a quiet murmur that Eddie must have liked, because he started up a loud purr. “I was at Dad and Carmen’s for the weekend. I hadn’t wanted to go, but Mom didn’t give me much choice. This was when I was in middle school, a new teenager, sullen and unhappy with the world.”